*The Footpath and the Skyscraper: The Pleasures of Deewaar

Few films from mainstream Hindi cinema have captivated audiences as much over nearly four decades as Yash Chopra’s Deewaar (1975, with Amitabh Bachchan). At a book launch in New Delhi last evening, a journalist told me that the film producer, writer, poet, and former editor of the Illustrated Weekly of India, Pritish Nandy, once declared Deewaar to be the single most interesting ‘masala’ film. I cannot say how reliable is this information, but for many years I nursed an ambition to write a small book on Deewaar. The results of that ambition are there to be seen in my book Deewaar: The Footpath, the City and the Angry Young Man, due to be released by HarperCollins India in mid-December.

Among the most spellbinding elements of Deewaar is what I have described as the dialectic of the footpath and the skyscraper. To give readers a taste of what they might expect by way of interpretation, here are a few slightly edited passages from the book:

“Moving as he does between the extremes, from the village to a global trade in smuggled goods, from the uniform of a mere coolie at Bombay’s docks to tailored suits, we should not be surprised that Vijay [Amitabh Bachchan] teeters between the footpath and the skyscraper. Deewaar has justly been described as a film that gives vent to the explosive anger of discontented young urban India, as well as a film that, while exploring, partly through tacit invocations to the rich mythic material found in the Mahabharata, the inexhaustible theme of fraternal conflict, provides an allegorical treatment of the eternal struggle between good and evil within oneself.”

“Compelling as are such readings, I would nevertheless suggest that Deewaar also puts on offer the dialectic of the footpath and the skyscraper . . . . The footpath or pavement . . . has ever been present in the Hindi film, to be numbered among the dramatis personae. The ubiquity of the footpath as home to the homeless, migrant labourers, and myriad others living at the margins of society is too self-evident to require comment. One can think of it more imaginatively as a school where life’s lessons are imbibed: while Ravi [Vijay’s brother, played by Shashi Kapoor] goes to school, where under the umbrella of the textbook, the national anthem, and the discipline of the rod he will learn to become the dutiful subject of the state, Vijay takes up shining shoes on the footpath. It is on this footpath that some of the dialogues inescapably associated with Deewaar take place: issuing a retort to Jaichand for throwing money at him after his shoes have been polished, the young Vijay says, ‘I polish shoes and do not beg for money. Pick up the money and place it in my hands.’ Vijay, Davar later cautions Jaichand, is the steed that runs long races (‘lambi race ka ghora’): ‘He is not going to be shining shoes the rest of his life. That day when he catches life by the neck, he will leave everyone behind. Mark my words: One day this boy will make something of himself.’”

“Sure enough, Vijay gravitates from the footpath to the skyscraper. Elsewhere in this book, I have described the impossible gift: when riches comes his way, Vijay’s first thought is to gift his mother the skyscraper built with nothing less than her blood, sweat and tears. All the insults and humiliations heaped upon her, he deludes himself into believing, are thereby avenged. Curiously, no sooner has he gained possession of the skyscraper than his fall commences, as if the footpath were beckoning him to return to his roots and plant his feet on the ground. ‘Meri ma ne yahan eente uthai thi’ (‘my mother carried bricks on her head here’), Vijay informs the businessman from whom he purchases the skyscraper, but the fact that his claim on this skyscraper is ephemeral, and ultimately undeserving, is underscored by the fact that the viewer’s sight of the building is barred throughout their negotiations. . . .”

Woah! I have just written a chapter on Deewaar for a book on Indian cinema which is due for publication next year. Can I get hold of this book in the UK? Its sounds like a brilliant read. Could we trace a lineage of the footpath back to films such as Poot Bolish and the representation of urban poverty?

Hello Omar,
The book is available at flipkart.com and they may ship overseas; it will be another two months, approximately, before
it is listed at amazon in the US, UK, etc. On the more substantive question, the chapter on the footpath/skyscraper doesn’t
attempt a history of the sort you have in mind. To some extent one can certainly go back to films such as
“Boot Polish”, “Footpath”, and others — but the contrast with the “skyscraper”, which is missing from earlier
films, is critical. You’ll just have to read the book to see how I navigate my way around the film, though I will,
in a week or two, put up another post pointing, again briefly, to some other aspects of the film.

Ok, I will check flipkart to see if they ship overseas and I see what you mean by the contrast with the skyscraper because iconographically it does become more prominent in Hindi cinemas after deewaar – one can see evidence in even films like satya and slumdog millionaire; has it become tied to both the urban slum genre and the Mumbai gangster film?

Hi Omar,
I do, in fact, have a brief discussion of both “Satya” and “Slumdog” in my book. Whatever the similarities
between ‘Deewaar’ and ‘Satya’, and in my view they are overstated, the differences are marked; the two films
exhibit a rather different sensibility. Violence is almost incidental to ‘Deewaar’; it is central to ‘Satya’. Though
I very much like ‘Satya’, it in some respects a timid film — the ease with which Vijay and Anita are shown
cohabiting is something that ‘Satya’, 25 years later, could not replicate. With respect to ‘Slumdog’, it is, in addition
to everything else that has been said about it, a film about Amitabh’s films, and none figures as prominently
in ‘Slumdog’ as ‘Deewaar’. It wasn’t possible to discuss all this in detail but I drop sufficient hints of what
I have in mind. Cheers, Vinay

[…] (1975) — on which I have written a book [HarperCollins, late December 2010] to which I made reference in my blog earlier this month — twists and turns on a number of phenomena, none perhaps as remarkable as the act of […]